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Bitcoin themed balloons float in the air during the "Inside Bitcoins: The Future of Virtual Currency Conference" in New York.

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Reuters/Lucas Jackson

On
Tuesday, bitcoin split in two, doubling the holdings of some
investors. With bitcoin cash trading around $400, those investors
got a big payday. Not everyone is benefitting because not every exchange
backed the new cryptocurrency.

The
bitcoin split doubled the holdings of some investors, and
today they appear to be reaping the benefits of the much
anticipated fork.

To recap, on Tuesday, bitcoin split in two following a years-long
battle in the community over the rules that should guide the
cryptocurrency's network.

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That split resulted in the creation of a new currency, bitcoin
cash, which has the same basic underpinnings, but plays by
different rules. In essence, it's almost like bitcoin cash is a
copy of bitcoin, but running on a faster network.

There are numerous exchanges and wallets in which bitcoin
investors can hold their money.

Investors who were holding their bitcoin on an exchange that
backed bitcoin cash before the split, or in a wallet, saw their
holdings double. But that wasn't the case for everyone. Some big
name exchanges, such as Coinbase, which serves nearly 9 million
customers across 32 countries, refused to back bitcoin cash. As
such, investors using Coinbase, for example, saw no change to the
quantity of their holdings.

"In the event of two separate blockchains after August 1, 2017 we
will only support one version," David Farmer, the director of Biz
Ops at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, wrote in a
blog post. "We have no plans to support the bitcoin cash
fork."

Aaron Lasher, CMO of Breadwallet, told Business Insider that
larger exchanges didn't back the coin because it's a hassle.

"You have to consider the cost of updating your coding and
security capabilities," he said. "Also, they probably didn't
think it was going to take off."